Wildfire at Midnight (3 page)

"And doesn't Skye come up to the book?"

"In a way. The hills are quite terribly pretty and all that, and I saw some deer yesterday with the cutest baby, but the trouble is you can't really get around. Do you like walking—rough walking?"

"I do, rather."

"Well, I don't. And Fergus just simply refuses to take the car over some of these roads."

"Fergus? You're here with your husband, then?" I tried vainly to remember who was Marcia Maling's current man.

"My dear! I'm not married at all, just now. Isn't it heaven, for a change?" She gave a delicious little chuckle over her pink gin, and I found myself smiling back. Her charm was a tangible thing, something radiant and richly alive, investing her silliest clichés and her outdated extravagances of speech with a heart-warming quality that was as real as the blazing fire between us. "No. Fergus is my chauffeur."

"Marcia!" The name was out before I realized it; the fact that I used it was, in a way, a tribute to that charm. "You haven't brought a car and chauffeur here? Is that what you call vegetating?"

"Well, I hate walking," she said reasonably, "and anyway, we're not staying here all the time. I'm on a sort of tour of the Highlands and Islands. Let's have another drink. No, really, it's on me." She reached out and pressed the bell. "In a way, we came here because of Fergus. He was born here. Not that he cares much for auld lang syne and all that, but it seemed as good a place as any to come to."

I stared at her. I couldn't help it. "You're very—considerate," 1 said. "Your employees—"

She looked at me. This time the famous smile was definitely the one from that very naughty show Yes, My Darling. "Aren't I just? But Fergus—oh, a dry sherry, isn't it? And another pink gin." She gave the order and turned back to me. "D'you know, if I talked like this to anyone else in the hotel they'd freeze like—like stuffed trout."

"Who else is in the hotel?"

"Well, let's see. . There's Colonel and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson. They're dim, but rather sweet. They fish all the time, day and night, and have never, to my certain knowledge, caught anything at all."

"I think I saw them come in. Elderly, with an empty creel?"

"That's them all right. Then, still talking of fish, there's Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan and Mr. Braine."

"Not Alastair Braine, by any odd chance?"

"I believe that is his name." Her glance was speculative. "A friend of yours?"

"I've met him. He's in advertising."

"Well, he's with this Corrigan couple. And," added Marcia meditatively, "if ever I could find it in me to pity a woman who's married to a man as good-looking as Hartley Corrigan,. I'd pity that one."

"Why?" I asked, amused. Marcia Maling's views on marriage, delivered personally, ought to be worth listening to.

"Fish," she said, simply.

"Fish? Oh, I get it. You mean fish?"

"Exactly. He and Alastair Braine, they're just like the Cowdray-Simpsons. Morning, noon, and night. Fish.

And she does nothing—nothing—to fight it, though she's obviously having an utterly foul time, and has been for weeks. She moons miserably about alone with her hands in her pockets."

I remembered the depressed-looking woman who had trudged upstairs in the wake of the Cowdray-Simpsons. "I think I've seen her. She didn't look too happy, I agree. But I doubt," I said thoughtfully, "if there's a woman living who could compete with fish, once they've really got hold of a man."

Marcia Maling wriggled her lovely body deeper into her chair, and said: "No?"

"All right," I said. "You, possibly. Or Rita Hayworth. But no lesser woman."

"But she doesn't even try!" said Marcia indignantly. "And he—oh well, who else?"

"I saw two women—" I began.

"Oh yes, the—what's the word?—schwarmerinen," said Marcia, in her lovely, carrying voice. "They—"

"Marcia, no! You really musn't!"

But the crusading spirit seemed to be unexpectedly strong in Miss Maling. Her fine eyes flashed. "That child!" she exclaimed. "Nineteen if she's a day, and dragged everywhere by that impossible female with the mustache! My dear, she bullies her, positively!"

"If she didn't like the female," I said reasonably, "why would she come with her?"

"I told you. They're—"

"No, Marcia. It's slander, or something. Do remember this is a Scottish fishing hotel, not a theatre cocktail party."

"I suppose you're right." She sighed. "Actually, they come from the same school, or something. The little one's just started teaching there, and the other one takes P.K. or R.T. or something. I heard her actually admitting it."

"Admitting what?" I asked, startled.

"Teaching this R.T. or whatever it is. What is it?"

"Muscular Christianity, I should think."

"Well, there you are," said Marcia gloomily.

"Who else is there? I met a man in the boat coming over from Elgol—"

"That would be Roderick Grant. He practically lives here, I believe. Tallish, nice-looking, with rather gorgeous hair?"

"That's the one. Blue eyes."

"And how," said Marcia, with feeling. "He's definitely interesting, that is, if it wasn't for—" She broke off and drank some gin.

Conscious of a steadily mounting curiosity to see Fergus, I said merely: "I gathered that this Roderick Grant is a fisherman too."

"What? Oh, yes, they all are," said Marcia bitterly. "But I must say, he's only spasmodic about it. Most of the time he walks, or something. He's never in the hotel."

"He's a climber,"' I said, amused.

"Probably. There's another climber chap called Beagle."

"Ronald Beagle9"

"I believe so. Another friend of yours?"

"No. I've never met him. but I've heard of him. He's a famous climber."

She showed a spark of interest. "Really? Yes, now you mention it, he does sit every night poring over maps and things, or glued to the radio listening to this Everest climb they're making."

"That's who it is, then. He wrote a book once on Nanga Parbat."

"Oh?" said Marcia, losing interest. "Well, he goes round with another man, a queer little type called Hubert Hay. I don't think they came together, but I gather Hay's a writer as well. He's little and round and quite, quite sorbo."

"Sorbo?"

"Yes. Unsquashable."

"I see. But what an odd word. Sorbo... is it Italian?"

She gave a charming little choke of laughter. "My God, but that dates me, doesn't it? I'll have to watch myself. No, darling, it's not Italian. Some way back, in the thirties, when you were in your pram, they sold unsquashable rubber balls for children. Sorbo Bouncers, they were called."

"And you used to play with them?"

"Darling," said Marcia again. "But how sweet of you. .. . Anyway, the little man's definitely sorbo in nature and appearance, and wears fancy waistcoats. There’s another man whose name I don't know, who got here last night. I've a feeling he writes, too."

"Good heavens."

"I know. Just a galaxy of talent, haven't we? Though probably none of them are any good. Sorbo is definitely not. But this chap looks as though he might be—:all dark and damn-your-eyes," said Marcia poetically, then gloomed at her gin. "Only—he fishes, too."

"It sounds a very intriguing collection of people," I said.

"Doesn't it?" she said without conviction. "Oh, and there's an aged lady who I think is Cowdray-Simpson's mother and who knits all the time, my dear, in -the most ghastly colors. And three youths with bare knees who camp near the river and come in for meals and go about with hammers and sickles and things—"

"Geology students, I'll bet," I said. "And I rather doubt the sickles. There's only one thing for it, you know.

You'll have to take up fishing yourself. I'm going to. I'm told it's soothing for the nerves."

She shot me a look of horror mingled with respect. "My God! How marvellous of you! But—" Then her gaze fell on my left hand, and she nodded. "I might have known. You're married. I suppose he makes you.

Now, if that wretched Mrs. Corrigan—"

"I'm not married," I said.

She caught herself. "Oh, sorry, I—"

"Divorced."

"O—oh!" She relaxed and sent me a vivid smile. "You too? My dear, so'm I." "I know."

"Three times, honey. Too utterly exhausting, I may tell you. Aren't they stinkers?" "I beg your pardon?"

"Men, darling. Stinkers." "Oh, I see."

"Don't tell me yours wasn't a stinker too?" "He was," I said. "Definitely."

"I knew it," said Marcia happily. I thought I had never seen two pink gins go further. "What was his name?"

"Nicholas."

"The beast," she said generously. The old crusading instinct was rising again, I could see. "Have another drink, Jeanette darling, and tell me all about it."

"This one's on me," I said firmly, and pressed the bell. "And my name is Gianetta. Gee-ann-etta. Of Italian origin, like sorbo."

"It's pretty," said she, diverted. "How come you've an Italian name?"

"Oh, it's old history

" I ordered the drinks, glad to

steer the conversation in a new direction. "My great-grandmother was called Gianetta. She's the kind of ancestress one wants to keep in the family cupboard, tightly locked away, only my great-grandmamma never let herself be locked away anywhere, for a moment."

"What did she do?" asked Marcia, intrigued.

"Oh, she took the usual road to ruin. Artists' model, artists' mistress, then married a baronet, and—"

"So did 1 once," said Marcia cheerfully. "I left him, though. Did she?"

"Of course. She bolted with a very advanced young artist to Paris, where she made a handsome fortune—don't ask me how—then died in a nunnery at the happy old age of eighty-seven."

"Those were the days." Marcia's voice was more than a little wistful. "Not the nunnery bit, but the rest. . .

. What a thoroughly worthy great-grandmother to have— especially the bit about the fortune and the title."

I laughed. "They didn't survive. Mother was the only grandchild, and Gianetta left all her money to the convent —as fire insurance, I suppose." I put down my empty glass. "So—unlike my great-grandmamma—I wear clothes for a living."

Through the glass door I could see the Cowdray-Simpsons coming down the stairs. A maid bustled across the hall towards the dining room. Outside, behind the steep crest of Sgurr na Stri, the red of the sky was deepening to copper, its brightness throwing the jagged rock into towering relief. I saw three young men—the campers, no doubt—coming along from the river; they skirted the windows of the lounge, and a moment later I heard the porch door swing open and shut.

Somewhere, a clock struck seven.

"I'm hungry," I said. "Thank heaven it's dinnertime."

I got out of my chair, and moved to the window that faced east. Away in front of the hotel stretched the breadth of the valley floor, almost a mile of flat sheep-bitten turf, unbroken save by little peaty streams that here and there meandered seawards. The road, narrow and rutted, curved away across it, following the shore line, then lifted its grey length up through the heather and out of sight. To the right the sea murmured, pewter-dark now and unillumined in the shadow of the mountains. Far to the left, at Blaven's foot, a glimmer of water recalled the copper sky.

A late grouse shouted "Comeback!" and fell silent. A gull on the shore stretched its wings once, then settled them again upon its back. The sea seemed still. It was a prospect wild and dreary enough; no sound but a bird's call and a sheep's lament, no movement but the shake of a gull's wing and the stride of a latecomer walking unhurriedly across the grass.

Then the walker trod on the gravel of the road. The scrunch of his boot on the rough surface startled the stillness. A feeding snipe flashed up beside him, and fled up the glen in a ;zigzag of lightning flight. I saw the silver gleam of his undcrwings once, twice, against the towering menace of Blaven, then 1 lost him.

"Blaven ..." I said thoughtfully. "I wonder—"

Behind me. Marcia's voice was sharp and brittle. "Not any more of that, please. D'you mind?"

I looked back at her in surprise. She was gulping the last of her third gin, and across it she met my eyes queerly. Disconcerted, and a little shaken, as one always is by rudeness, I stared back at her. I had shifted the talk rather arbitrarily, I knew, to Gianetta and her misdeeds, but then I hadn't wanted to talk about Nicholas. And she had seemed interested enough. If I had been boring her—but she had not appeared to be bored. On the contrary.

She gave an apologetic little grin. "I can't help it," she said. "But don't let's. Please."

"As you wish," I said, a little stiffly. "I'm sorry." I turned back to the window.

The mountain met me, huge and menacing. And I looked at it in sudden enlightenment. Blaven. It had been my mention of Blaven, not of Gianetta, that had made Marcia retreat into her gin glass like a snail into its shell. Roderick Grant, and Murdo, and now Marcia Maling . . . or was I being over-imaginative? I stared out at the gathering dusk, where the latecomer was just covering the last twenty yards to the hotel door.

Then my look narrowed on him. I stiffened, and looked again. . . .

"Oh my God," I said sharply, and went back into the room like a pea from a catapult.

I stopped on the hearthrug, just in front of a goggle-eyed Marcia Maling, and drew a long, long breath. "Oh my dear God," I said again. "What's up? Is it because I—?"

"It's not you at all," I said wearily. "It's the man who's just arriving at the front door of this hotel." "Man?"

She was bewildered.

"Yes. I presume he is your nameless, dark, damn-your-eyes writer . . . except that he doesn't happen to be nameless to me. His name is Nicholas Drury."

Her mouth opened. ''No! you mean—?" I nodded. "Just that. My husband." "The—the stinker?"

I smiled mirthlessly. "Quite sc. As you say. This holiday," 1 added without any conviction whatsoever, "is going to be fun."

YES, THERE IT WAS, as large as life, the arrogant black signature in the visitors' book: Nicholas Drury, London. May 29th, 1953. I looked down at it for a moment, biting my lip, then my eye was caught by another entry in the same hand, high up on the preceding page: Nicholas Drury, London. April 28th, 1953.